Howth Harbour

One of my biggest obsessions, which I have done absolutely nothing about...
...is the thought of being on a boat adrift on the open ocean.

I walked around Howth Harbour looking at all the boats, not exactly sure why I'm intrigued by them


When my walking is done, maybe this needs to be explored.

Check back here, it may be years from now, but I'm sure I'll be writing about it.

Howth Head Penninsula

At the start of the Cliff Path on Howth Head Peninsula, sits one of the Martello Towers...

It is one of a series of towers built at the start of the 1800s by the Duke of York as a defense against a Napoleonic invasion.

The Cliff Path skirts the edge of Howth Head...

...guaranteeing great views for miles.

This is Baily Lighthouse on the southeast corner of the peninsula, built in 1814...

along with a house built for the lighthouse keeper.

Getting to the shoreline wouldn't be safely doable, but this is where I wanted to call my first major section on the hike complete.

So I got as close to the water as I could and called it a success. 

That island is called Ireland's Eye. I was curious how it got it's name, so I looked it up. Over 2,000 years ago the Celts called it Eria's Island.

At some point, the name Eria was confused with another woman's name, Erin, so people eventually started calling it Erin's Island. Erin is the Anglicized form of the name Éireann, which is the Gaelic word for Ireland, so the island became known as Ireland's Island. The Viking's Norse word for Ireland is Ey, which is why we now call it Ireland's Eye. 

As it was getting late, and the view was spectacular, I was determined to find a place to camp nearby. I searched for a spot, but couldn't find flat ground. I climbed up the highest spot I could find and looked around. Below me was a spot that seemed like others had camped at before


Surrounded by salt water, camping here would mean searching for fresh water, but the spot I found was actually next to a source, a 4-liter jug filled with 3 liters of water. (Don't worry, I filtered it.)

At the site, I also found a lot of garbage and an unused trash bag.

I don't believe in Karma, but I believe in living as though I do...

So in exchange for the free water and the use of the land, I carried out a 20-gallon-sized trash bag full of garbage and left the site in perfect condition for the next hiker.

Sky Backpackers Hostel

I received a donation from Liz in Indiana saying it was so I could stay an extra night when I got to Dublin. I was able to stay two extra nights at the Sky Backpackers Hostel. Thank you Liz! I wouldn't have seen half of what I saw in Dublin without your generosity!
I've stayed in maybe 20 hostels in the US and Ireland, but this was by far my favorite.

Great staff, very clean, not crowded, great people, and very affordable.

And an amazing kitchen

The staff organized a wine tasting, where I met a lot of great people from around the world

Some of us went to a couple of bars in the Temple Bar area of Dublin. Leaving at least one of us with a slight hangover the next morning (me).

Wandering Around Dublin

This is Christ Church Cathedral

This is inside Christ Church Cathedral. I didn't pay for the tour, so this is all I can give you, sorry.

Back outside the Christ Church Cathedral





This is Einstein's head made of Sand at Dublin Castle

This is Saint Patrick's Cathedral, a man most known in America for popularizing binge drinking green beer and pinching schoolkids who do not wear green to school on St. Patrick's Day

Another angle

And another

And another
This is the Temple Bar area in Dublin. It's full of tourists, beer, some drunken tourists, cobbled streets, beer, live music, and beer.

Due to talent and fingerless gloves, these guys drew a pretty good crowd.


Dublin Museum Tour

The first museum I went to see in Dublin was The National Museum - Archaeology

There were a surprising number of human remains in the museum, this viking skeleton for one, but also several Iron Age bodies found preserved in Ireland's bogs. I chose to not take pictures of those. One thing I found interesting about the bog bodies exhibit, was that immediately after it was the Museum Cafe. Surprisingly, after seeing what looked like thousand year old people jerky, I wasn't hungry.

This is Saint Stephen's Green, I'm really ashamed of my terrible photos of this beautiful park. I didn't do it justice.

Next I went to the "Dead Zoo"

Also known as The National Museum - Natural History

Then I saw priceless works of art at The National Gallery

Then walked around Trinity College, founded in 1592 

Next I walked to The Science Gallery. This exhibit fascinated me the most. It was all about a guy who put in his will that after he died he wanted to be rain. This was accomplished by cloud seeding. His ashes were floated into the troposphere, the highest point at which clouds form, by a weather balloon filled with helium gas. The capsule becomes increasingly pressurized as it travels up then bursts, sending his ashes into the clouds below. Water droplets in the clouds condensed on his ashes and dropped as rain.  I need to get to work thinking of an awesome thing I can do with my body when I die. I'll keep you posted.

Guinness Storehouse & Brewery

♫ Come with me, and you'll be, in a world of pure imagination... ♫♪

Of course, one of the first things I did in Dublin was go to the St. James Gate Guinness Brewery and Storehouse. This is the 9,000 year lease on the building that Arthur Guinness signed in 1759. He had big plans.
♫  If you want to view paradise. Simply look around and view it. Anything you want to do it. Wanta change the world? There's nothing to it. ♫ 
♫  There is no, life I know, to compare with pure imagination ♫ 

♫  Living there, you'll be free, if you truly wish... to be. ♫

Okay I'll stop.

If I didn't already feel like I was in Willie Wonka's factory, I would have when entering... The Tasting Rooms

♫ We'll begin, with a spin, Traveling in, the world of my creation, What we'll see, Will defy explanation ♫

I can't stop. This song will still be stuck in my head for days. 

What you are smelling there my friend (who I don't know and hope don't mind being on my blog), you're smelling hops. This was one of four pillars in the first tasting room blowing out a mist of aroma. Each one the individual smell of an ingredient in Guinness.

It was time to be taught how to properly drink Guinness. Something about it felt like communion. 

The Velvet Room, where they teach people how to properly drink a Guinness. Churning out an army of beer snobs seven days a week. Elbow up, breathe in, drink, swirl it around your mouth while exhaling.

Generations of Guinness Commercials

The Guinness Academy. Okay smart guy, you think you already know how to properly drink a Guinness, but do you know how to properly pour a Guinness? I do.

Because I took a class. That's mine on the right waiting 119 seconds for the nitrogen gas and carbon dioxide to form that creamy head Guinness is known for. 

Next, top it off and present to the customer logo out.
That customer was me. I took the Guinness I pour myself to the Gravity Bar on the top floor
With views of the brewery and the city below

To Dublin!

Getting to Dublin

Powerscourt Waterfall

A morning fog still lingering around

Leaving Wicklow Mountains, entering Dublin Mountains

Dublin!

An awesome room with an awesome shower. Rooms are so cheap in Ireland. Only 45 Euros (about $60) for this room in downtown Dublin.

Lough Tay and My First View of the Eastern Coast

Wow, Sheep? In Ireland!?

After a town visit in Roundwood, I climbed back up the mountains.

How quickly the weather can turn in Ireland

But that can't stop it from being beautiful

I believe this lake is called Lough Tay. The picture does it little justice.

The Ocean! My coast-to-coast hike across Ireland is almost complete!

Except first I would go north to Dublin















Here comes the rain again, on the right.



Leaving Glendalough

Leaving Glendalough
I love seeing this kind of thing every day. And having no idea what you'll see when you wake up is great motivation for getting out of a warm sleeping bag. At home I have to really convince myself not hit snooze a couple more times. "If I skip breakfast, I can have 9 more minutes of zzz..." 


Every time I see a rainbow in Ireland, I think of Lucky Charms. I can't help it.

Glendalough Valley at sunset


The Monastic City at Glendalough

The restaurant was empty except me and a couple sitting a few tables away. I had my head in a book with a plate of crumbs and cup of coffee sitting in front of me. I had been looking forward to taking pictures of the sixth century monastic settlement and cemetery in Glendalough for a few days. When I arrived it was pouring, so I went into a restaurant to wait it out.

Another couple came in and placed an order at the bar. They looked around at the empty tables then made their way straight toward me.

"Is anyone sitting at this table?" she asked. The table she referred to had been pushed against mine, presumably by a party larger than four who all wanted to sit together earlier in the day.

"Uh, no," I said and they sat down next to me.

Maybe they just wanted to sit by the window? The radius of personal space I normally prefer in life is not as substantial in Ireland. Apparently.

I didn't want to overhear their conversation, but it was impossible not to with them so close. I wanted to continue reading my book, "The Martian."

"Look at that boy with the ice cream," the man said. A boy outside the window licked a big ice cream cone with a glob of it stuck to the tip of his nose.

The man smiled. He looked at his wife. She wasn't smiling. Her face was heavy with sadness. He put away his smile.

"Are you okay?" he asked.

"Yeah," she said. "It's just... You know."

"Yeah." He said in a comforting voice. He reached for her hand and held it in both of his. It got quiet.

Really quiet.

I continued reading about an astronaut stranded on Mars. How would he survive on a planet not habitable by humans? I tried to focus on my book, but then I heard sniffing. Somehow the silence became too loud for me to concentrate on the book. I don't know why I looked, but I did. The man's eyes were red and shiny with tears.

Awkwardly quiet.

Should I get up and leave? Was that table so significant to them that it didn't matter if I or anyone else was already sitting there? How would it look if I just moved everything over to a different table and sat down? In life, whenever I don't know what I should do next, I usually just keep doing what I'm doing. I quickly shifted my eyes back to my book.

After a morning and afternoon of non-stop rain, it finally cleared up. I looked out the window and saw blue sky poking through the clouds. I packed up to go take my pictures in the cemetery, where the rules about personal space are more clearly defined.







Day One on Wicklow Way

This is Clonegal, the town where the last segment of my coast to coast hike begins, The Wicklow Way

This is the Ireland flag in the sun flying above Huntington Castle

I love all the colorful doors in Ireland. They have a way of turning dilapidated into quaint 

These are the most badass sheep in all of Ireland. Mostly because they are the only two that haven't ran from me at this distance. Their eyes are saying, go ahead try shearing off my wool. Give me a reason...

I never get tired of this view

Conway's Bar and Lounge

The 65-mile South Leinster Way ended in a town called Kildavin
At what ended up being my favorite pub in all of Ireland, so far, called Conway's Bar and Lounge. 

A man I passed on the way into town sat beside me at the bar and introduced himself as the owner of Conways. He was so excited about what I was doing that he slapped a five on the bar and told the bartender to pour me another Guinness, my third for the night. Then he told me I could setup camp in a lawn next to the bar. Which was perfect because I had already planned on doing that after they closed!

Nine Stones

South Leinster Way would now take me along country roads, up a hill, to something on the map called Nine Stones
I had no idea what Nine Stones would be exactly, but I imagined some tall monolithic stones aligned in a significant way, but anyway, a great walk doesn't require a destination, right?

I walk down the road with my arm out feeling the grass a lot. I can't explain why. Scattering grass makes me feel like some kind of Johnny GrassSeed

So many people in Ireland have a great view out their back windows

This guy didn't care about the view, he just wanted out and he almost had his escape figured out. His enthusiasm for getting that gate opened made me think I was one opposable thumb away from getting attacked by a horse.
At the top was an amazing view where I ate lunch and sat for a couple of hours

Oh and there were some anti-climactic stones which may or may not have been left here in modern times. It wasn't false advertisement, though, that's nine stones alright

The walk down was treeless, so the view stretched for miles

This was one of the most beautiful days on the hike since I left the western coast

Ireland is trying to keep it beautiful with many acres devoted to wind power

Irish Cuisine

When in Ireland, you should only go to restaurants that serve traditional Irish foods, right? It seemed like a good rule for myself anyway. You should sample the local flavors while you have the chance. Aside from a decent cottage pie, my first few restaurant meals were not so great, though. A little disappointing in fact.

Even foods that looked good enough to make me salivate, ended up being bland, dry, over or under-cooked, or had a combination of ingredients that didn't seem to belong together. It started to make sense why they put gravy on everything.

I am not a picky eater at all. I generally love all foods, provided they don't have eyes or look like they might be able to walk off my plate, so I didn't want to give up on Irish cuisine so quickly. Recently, however, I threw in the towel.

The turning point came when I walked into a little grocery store one morning that sold hot food in buffet-style metal trays behind sneeze guards. As I'm on a budget, I had to ask the woman behind the counter how much everything cost.

"The sausages, ham, and eggs are all 75 cent each," she said. "You know, it's cheaper to buy a breakfast sandwich for €4, it comes with a little of everything."

A meat and egg filled sandwich sounded great to me. "Alright, let's do that," I said.

She split open the loaf of bread and plopped a big dollop of baked beans on top. It happened too fast for me to stop it.

"Oh goddammit." I politely said only inside my head. 

She indeed stuffed it full of ham, sausage, and egg, but then came the white pudding, a sort of hockey puck of oatmeal, pork kidney fat, and god knows what else.

"Would you like red sauce?" she asked.

"What's red sauce?" I was almost afraid to ask. Sometimes more information negatively effects the enjoyment of the thing I'm chewing on.

"It's kind of a tomato--" she began to say.

"It's ketchup," said a girl working nearby.

"Will ketchup make pork suet covered in baked beans more palatable?" I wondered. I had an inkling the answers was a definitive no, but for some reason I said, "just a little bit."

Since I'm on a budget, I ate the whole gigantic mess of a thing, other than what I eventually picked off and some of the bean soaked bread I threw under a bush, an act of littering I justified by imagining an emaciated animal using it to gain the energy to go find a proper meal. The horrible taste haunted me for days. Actually, I've had to take a break from writing this three times just to prevent a phantom taste of it from nauseating me again.

They say that adults who lose their sense of smell, and so also the ability to taste foods as they once did, commit suicide more often than people who lose any other of the five senses. That's including eyesight. Irish cuisine isn't going to make me jump off a cliff, you can rest assured, but being unable to satisfy food cravings has been bad enough that I have thought of this statistic many times. Even familiar foods that I love, in Ireland, don't taste like I'm used to them tasting.

Eventually, I had to admit to myself that food in Ireland just isn't for me. I'm sorry, Irish food. You know what? It's not you... It's me. We just come from two very different places and have different expectations and rules about things.

It was time to break my rule to eat traditional Irish food and just start eating whatever I wanted. What I wanted was my mom's fried chicken, mashed potatoes with gravy, and macaroni and cheese. I thought about it as I walked down the road staring at pavement. I shook the thought out of my head.

"Stop torturing yourself, man! That option is literally not on the table."

Later, I walked into a city and found the next best thing. Kentucky Fried Chicken. No longer encumbered by my ridiculous rule to experience the local fare, I headed straight for it. Visions of Extra Crispy Chicken danced in my head like marionette puppets. Ooooh and mashed potatoes with gravy! And hot flaky biscuits drowning in melted butter! The picture of the Colonel almost brought tears to my eyes, like seeing the face of my best friend after years of separation.

I walked in with a big stupid American grin on my face and looked over the menu.

"Can I help you?" a girl behind the register asked with a French accent.

"I don't see Extra Crispy Chicken," I said. "Do you have that?"

She confusedly pointed to some chicken fingers on the menu.

Okay, no problem. Original recipe will be fine.

"I don't see your sides," I said. "Do you have mashed potatoes?"

"No mashed potatoes," she said. "The only sides we have are gravy, corn, and beets."

Okay calm down, Ryan. First, ignore that she said beets, just put that out of your mind. Second, KFC gravy is good. Great in fact. But wait... what do you put it on? What kind of a side is just gravy? Do I eat it with a spoon? Spin the ear of corn around in it? I didn't even ask if they had biscuits. Biscuits are cookies here. What would they even call them?

Okay, I thought, just stick with the chicken. It's still the Colonel's famous 11 herbs and spices after all. There are strict franchise rules that require they get that right... Right? My eyes eventually landed on a meal that I thought sounded promising. I forget the name, but it was something like "Big Box of Random Types of Chicken For One Fat Man Meal." 

The french girl nodded her head smiling and said, "Yeah." As though confirming that she knew I'd be such a man to order that.

It was good. Not exactly what I had hoped for, but good. I started going to other American fast food chains as well, but none are quite the same as back home. I even started ordering sandwiches they don't sell in the US, just so I didn't have any expectation or disappointment.

Okay, so I feel like I'm whining a little bit too much here, but there is a happy ending. I eventually found a perfect solution for my food issues. It has worked out so well so far, that I'm once again excited about getting to town for restaurant food. It was so simple I couldn't believe it took me so long to figure it out. The solution is this: 

Authentic Mexican Food.

South Leinster Way

After leaving Clonmel, South Leinster Way followed the River Suir for miles, crosssing over the Three Arched Hump Back Bridge

Then passed Cill Siollan, the ruins of a 12th century church. Then unfortunately a couple miles of unmaintained trail full of thorns and nettles.

After running out of daylight, I had to camp in a visible spot along the river in Carrick-on-Suir. The early morning fishermen didn't seem to mind, but I got up early anyway. Much too early to take the tour of Ormond Castle.

Then into Graiguenamanagh, which is a town and not a random collection of letters.

I stopped at a small shop to buy food. The woman behind the counter told me there was a regatta in town today. 

Iwatched various events including people paddling around in these viking boats, a youth diving competition, and tube and rowing races
The next town was called Borris, home of a 16-arch limestone viaduct built in 1860.

I wondered if anyone had ever said, "Where is the viaduct? Good there's a sign. Oh there's the viaduct."

I climbed on top to search for a campsite. I considered camping on the viaduct itself, but figured it might be frowned upon.
But I found a good spot beyond those trees. I setup my tent on a hurling pitch, too high for people to see me from the ground, and with a view of the old viaduct. Something about that sentence makes me feel good about my life.

Ireland's Cigarette Warning Labels

I see a lot of cigarette packages with large warning labels on the side of the road

They're different than the warnings in the US, so I always check them out

A couple of them are kind of  graphic

But perhaps none more effective than this one

First Day on East Munster Way

On to the next trail on this hike across Ireland, East Munster Way

I actually didn't have to climb  this hill, but when I took this photo I still didn't know that I took a wrong turn.
In the end, it was worth it.

When I see colorfully branded sheep like these, I'm powerless to silence Homer Simpson's voice in my head saying, "Oooh, they look like Skittles!"

Here's my home. Let me give you the tour. That's the bedroom. The mound of dirt I'm sitting on is the living room. That grassy area in front of me is the kitchen and dining room. 

It's not much I know...

But it has one hell of a view.

Last Day on Blackwater Way

The Blackwater Way Trail had green tunnels...

Country roads and aging structures...

Cows... Lots of cows...

Distant views of patchwork farmland and small villages...

and big beautiful skies.

I walked for hours every day

Until my lengthening shadow told me it was time to look for camp

Carey's Castle

This is Carey's Castle.

Hidden in the woods along the Glenary River. 

One of the great things about not planning too much, is happening upon something like this
without knowing it would be here.

It is widely believed that the castle was built in the 1800s by the Carey family,
who were schoolmasters in the local Clonmel area.

Later it was occupied by monks.

Now only me.

This is the nearby town of Clonmel where I'll spend a day to rest my feet 

And why not, another picture of sheep!